Facebook Is Playing Defense, A Clear Sign That Its Confidence Is Shaken

The social network which once wowed us with product launches like
Timeline and News Feed now seems to be scared of fast-growing
startups, and it's losing focus.

The clearest example is Snapchat, a startup that's exploded to
millions of users in a little over one year. More than 50 million
photos are shared over the mobile app every day — that's higher
than Instagram's daily upload number.

What may frighten Zuckerberg most about Snapchat is the fact that
it's Facebook's polar opposite, and it's wildly popular. Instead
of uploading and sharing photos with the world, Snapchat
lets users share private photos with small numbers of people
and it deletes the images soon after they're sent. They're never
uploaded to a website and they can't be viewed more than once by
the recipient.

Facebook tried to flex its muscles and kill the app by copying
it. It made an
exact replica called Poke, which burst to the top of the app
store just after its launch, only to face the wrath of Snapchat's
loyal users. While Snapchat is still the #5 free app in the App
Store, Facebook's Poke has fallen out of the top 100.

Snapchat isn't the first product that's made Facebook veer off
course. Consider:

It purchased Instagram for $1 billion because it was a
better mobile photo sharing experience that could have syphoned
users away from the social network.